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Thursday, January 26, 2012

Politifacts: Obama is 75% Right

It's kind of funny really. Obama made two claims that the SOTU speech,

"In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005."

So Poitifacts looked it up and determined that: in the last 22 months-which of course is the bulk of Obama's term- businesses have created more than three million jobs and that last year they created the most since 2005.

The declare him half right though both-not just 1 out of 2-of his facts were actually accurate-that is to say facts.

So Jared Bernstein calls them on it-what did he say that wasn't true. Their answer was he implied that he deserves credit for it. In reality he hadn't but the question begs is what if he did?After all we know these jobs have been created, the reason for the job creation is a matter of speculation. I can explain it however I might like and you can't really accuse me of making a factual error though I may be right or not.

Really the reason for it at this point is beyond the realm of simple facts. Ironically Politifacts moves beyond the realm of just the facts ma'am itself by implicitly stating that the jobs were not due to Obama's policies. I mean that clearly assumes facts not in evidence.

Now Politifacts has split the difference and declared what he said 75% true. Why is this? Krugman thinks it's because it might help the Democrats. I don't know that it's that so much as that Politifacts is eager to maintain it's "nonpartisan" tag. However as Krugman observes facts have a clear Keynesian/liberal bias.